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Monday, February 16, 2015

Funnily enough, I've developed Weeklie so well (for my liking) that I think I'm going to stop posting here. Perhaps at some point in time in the future, I will migrate the data or whatnot. But if you would like to find out what's happening to me, then either ask me or ... maybe I'll have to integrate a share feature on Weeklie. I don't know it depends on how many people end up using it.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Since I only have about 3 days left, I need to start hustling. I might finally take the plunge with digital ocean, or work on the landing page. Hmm, not sure which one is more important.

In any case, I have decided to move my posts to my test Weeklie deployment for now. I'll simply copy and paste everything over here. Tonight after I write my evening reply I'll paste it over here.

I will run in the morning, and also complete the landing page for Weeklie. I should also finish reading the book I checked out from the library yesterday. And hopefully tonight I can get to bed before 9pm if possible. So in summary:

Run

Finish landing page for Weeklie

Read book

Sleep before 9pm

Well I did all those things except for sleeping before 9pm. I also didn't finish the book, but I did read a decent amount of it. As for Weeklie, well I finally did a soft-launch of the site. I don't know what's going to happen, and frankly I don't care. Just remember: make a lot of pots.

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Today I was quite productive. I read several chapters from the book and completed not only the daily entry portion of Weeklie, but also the Evaluations part. Tomorrow morning, I'll have to think about what I can do. I'll probably be sleep deprived if I don't sleep soon though, good night!

Friday, February 13, 2015

Today, I want to have the routing done so that I could get the dashboard substantially finished. If I have time, I'd also like a basic working template for the entry page as well. Most importantly, I need to sleep sooner tonight.

Evening Review:
Well that certainly wasn't too hard. I also took out a book from the library and will be spending some time reading it. It's about living an interesting life.

I am leaving San Francisco! Not much to do today since it's just a transit day. I do need to setup my plan for the upcoming week. I only have one goal this week:

Finish Weeklie

I also had another goal: to finish one of the short novels I have on my computer. But I'll let that be a secondary goal. Finishing Weeklie should keep me busy enough. I also need to plan my next trip. My life in the past several months have been so incredibly rich. I cannot imagine any other way to live.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

This is evaluation day. Although I didn't actually do much in terms of programming this week, I think it's important to talk about what I did in other aspects. As to my last week's goals:

Complete the design of Weeklie

Understand the situation and make a decision on whether or not to move to San Francisco

I've completed them on schedule. The final design for Weeklie in this first iteration is well underway, and pretty much a frozen concept from here on out. As for the move to San Francisco, I think we've also found out that there wouldn't be a right fit with my friend's startup. This is great, because it solves two of my biggest headaches I had 7 days ago.

I spent the first few days in San Francisco at my friend's house, not going out simply because I did not have a data plan on my phone and not even a paper map. I also had no idea how to take transit, so the whole idea was quite scary to me. However, on the fourth day since my arrival, I finally had the courage to do some reading online and step outside into the fray. What came about was excitement, adventure, learning, bliss, and friendship.

I thought there would be no way that I could get around and enjoy the sights without the internet or a map, but I was wrong. I thought that it would be scary and I would get lost and that I could possibly wander off into a bad place and never come back. Of course, none of this happened. When you throw yourself into the unknown, you find out that you were much more powerful than you gave yourself credit for and you wonder why you didn't do it sooner. I ended up making friends with a girl travelling from Korea, and saw some of the most beautiful sights this world had to offer. I discovered foods and interesting characters native to this geographical region, and felt immersed in the culture itself.

I also discovered a new perspective which led me to my decision to drop my articling contract and not take the bar exam at all. I was at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, taking in the scenery and I described the following to my friend:

I walked onto the sand, took off my shoes, sat down on a log and just put my pen to the paper of my notebook without inhibition. The warm mist of the ocean spray released me from the firm grips of perfectionism and I just let my thoughts flow onto the paper. It was overwhelmingly cathartic.

It was there that I realized that the past 10 months held within it so many lessons, so rich, and so colourful that it was pricelessly valuable. If this was the case, why would I spend the next 10 months on something that will largely be miserable and not contribute much to my future goals at all? The only positive aspect of that option would be mere social proof which I don't think will be very useful, given my aspirations.

Put in another way, the next 10 months can yield just as much excitement, learning, and positive effects as the last 10 months. To give that up would be a grave mistake. Is it scary? Yes. Will it disappoint my parents? Yes. Will it push me to perform and deliver in a way that I otherwise would not? Yes. Will I be happy? A million times yes.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Travelling is great. Today I met someone from Korea just by sitting randomly at a table with an empty seat at an In-and-Out. It's always good to just get out of your comfort zone. Not having data is actually kinda exciting, if a little bit scary. However, it's quite nice nevertheless.

Monday, February 9, 2015

I must be at the helm of my ship, even if it's a rickety raft made from scrap pieces of wood and cardboard. I'd rather ride that ship into the storm than as 4th in command on a vessel weighing thousands of tons.

The question now remains, should I still do my 10-month work contract? Or get to work immediately? I'll ponder on these questions while I spend my final days here in San Francisco.

Make a decision for SF
Today I met up with a friend who had a business idea. I think I can see myself taking his idea and expertise farther. But it has to be serious. It cannot be a simple idea to talk about. I've already created a Facebook group so hopefully we can develop this further.

Talking more and more with the startup guys is great. I get more ideas and understanding about startups in general. I am not sure if I want to move to SF, but this trip has definitely been a good learning experience.

Sunday, February 8, 2015

Make a decision about whether or not to drop everything and move here.
Well today was a long day of travel. I learned a lot about what my friends are doing here in San Francisco. I have a lot to think about.

Friday, February 6, 2015

Weekly Goals
- Vision for Weeklie
- San Francisco decision
And this is the beginning of a new day. I struggled very hard to get up at 6:45am this morning, but it was necessary. But more accurately, I guess I should say that I struggled to sleep at a reasonable time. That's the real cause, but it's a cycle that needs to be interrupted.

Today was simply tying loose ends for the San Francisco trip. Not too much going on here, although I think I did eat and spend a little too much on food today. I need to make sure to keep an eye on that. Tomorrow's post will be written in San Francisco!

Weekly Goals
- Vision for Weeklie
- San Francisco decision
My entire day was de-railed today. I woke up to find my car having been hit while parked on the street overnight. Of course luck would have it that there was no note left on my windshield or any attempt at giving me contact information. I had to make almost an hour of phone calls to various people to get this sorted out. It totally killed my mood and my plans for the day.

These things will happen...

Things are not gonna work out exactly right, for a time they will, sometimes, but that's when life is just playing a game with you. Anything that can happen, will happen. But during those down moments, that's when the work takes place. The real challenge of growth comes when you get knocked down. You have to be resilient.

I can let it destroy my life, or I can build upon it. It's not going to be easy, but if you're serious you'll go all out. Forgive, and grow.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

This week has been a very interesting week indeed. I realized that there are limits to a lot of things, and I need to recognize how to work around them to achieve my goals. Unfortunately, I was not able to achieve a lot of the goals I set for myself.

Failures
The failures I have endured this week include the following:

Not waking up in the morning - I have not been able to wake up in the morning for the last 5 days or so because I was initially feeling sick, and then I let one thing lead to another and fell off the horse completely.

Frustrating development progress - I was not able to finish and launch the website I had in mind within the 7 days I gave myself. I spent so many hours on it just to get it to a semi-working state. And I am not happy with it at all, not in the least bit.

These two things are my biggest worries and failures this week and they absolutely crushed my spirit. So today I decided to relax a bit and take a nice hike in the woods. Even though it was raining, I knew I needed it if I wanted to keep sane. After I came out of the woods, I felt a lot better and as a result I am now typing my weekly evaluation.

Realizations

I realized a few things:

Not all is lost - I may not have been able to wake up in the morning for the last few days, but that's okay. Wake up tomorrow. You can't win all the time, you'll fail and see a lack of progress at least once in your journey to your goals. None of that matters, as they say "wins and losses are a dime a dozen", it's the effort and ability to dust yourself off and get back on the horse that matters. Never give up. The bigger mistake would be to look at the failure and pain and give up now. When you're at the bottom, when there's seemingly no way out, it's the ones who still persist and experiment that'll eventually discover a stronger self within them.

Have a clear vision - I spent so much time trying to code haphazardly. I found out that I didn't even have a clear vision for what I want the final product to look like. So what ended up happening was that I would build a page, and then another, and then another simply based off of what I thought seemed to make sense. I was making stuff up as I go along, and that was not very productive. There's certainly something to be said for iterative design, but you need to have a vision going in, or else you're not really building anything at all. It's simply like to trying to build a sandcastle by flinging sand everywhere. You need to at least have an idea of what kinda buckets to use.

What I will do about it

It's not enough to simply recognize my failures and where I need improvement. I need to find a way to improve myself going forward. Next week is going to be quite busy because of my trip to San Francisco, but no matter. A plan is a plan is a plan is a plan. It's always better to have one than none at all. I can't try to shirk my responsibility just because something is out of the ordinary.

Plan Days 36 - 42

I'll still be in San Francisco by the time I get back, so most of my goals will likely be related to the trip itself.

Complete the design of Weeklie

Understand the situation and make a decision on whether or not to move to San Francisco

I'm trying to put more time into the creative vision for Weeklie. I am quite certain there is potential in it, I just need to make sure I am able to picture it in my head (or on paper). I know that if I can picture it, I can make it happen. But I need to picture it first.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Copy and paste every week's goals into the top of each daily blog post

Easy and done

Observe b4yougo.net and continue releasing it and following already released channels

Build a login/accounts system into the boilerplate

I have since turned this into the weeklie project itself

Whiteboard discipline

Plot out the first few hours of my day on the whiteboard every night

I must write down the actual TIME I would go and do my run

Do NOT sleep past 10pm

Failed

Think about how to use sites like niice or http://designspiration.net/ to create a Spotify or TV-like service

I want to be able to glance at these pretty things when I'm bored, kinda like having a TV in the background

I want to do this to develop taste, because I don't really use Instagram as much as a lot of other people do

Spec:

Allow user registration and login

Allow email verification

On first view of dashboard, force initial setup

Set weekly goal,

Note the date of weekly evaluation

Allow making entry for today

When user gets to the weekly evaluation date specified by the weekly goal, alert the user:

To do a weekly evaluation

To set goals for next week (because current weekly goals has expired)

All I need to do is to complete this spec today.

Unfortunately, I am currently experiencing burn-out. I don't know what it is, but I am not happy with how the site is structured. I am very tempted to re-do the entire thing. I'll have to do some soul-searching tomorrow morning.

Monday, February 2, 2015

Copy and paste every week's goals into the top of each daily blog post

Easy and done

Observe b4yougo.net and continue releasing it and following already released channels

Build a login/accounts system into the boilerplate

I have since turned this into the weeklie project itself

Whiteboard discipline

Plot out the first few hours of my day on the whiteboard every night

I must write down the actual TIME I would go and do my run

Do NOT sleep past 10pm

Failed

Think about how to use sites like niice or http://designspiration.net/ to create a Spotify or TV-like service

I want to be able to glance at these pretty things when I'm bored, kinda like having a TV in the background

I want to do this to develop taste, because I don't really use Instagram as much as a lot of other people do

Yesterday's goals:

Build a function that can pull the relevant weekly goals from the DB

Prompt the user that it's time to set a new weekly goal

Maybe add an expiry date to the weekly goals

If I have time, include a weekly evaluation form for the weekly goals

Other features:

Adding tags to the daily tasks or goals

Making a nice report page, or a blog-style output

I will see how far I can get with this.

Evening review.

Throughout the last month or so of development, I often found myself adding a ton of side features as I go along because it seems so easy and accessible since it's right in front of you as you are developing the core features. This is a serious danger because I'd say that at least 50% of my time is wasted on this instead of completing the core features. I need to remind myself that the core features are the MOST important and these side features (easy as they may be), will remain easy to implement later on as well.

As a result, I've developed a much better strategy. And that is to initially develop a spec. In other words, develop a use-case work flow and implement the system that allows it to happen. For example, my spec (that I developed today) in this case was:

Allow user registration and login

Allow email verification

On first view of dashboard, force initial setup

Set weekly goal,

Note the date of weekly evaluation

Allow making entry for today

When user gets to the weekly evaluation date specified by the weekly goal, alert the user:

To do a weekly evaluation

To set goals for next week (because current weekly goals has expired)

This is a much better way of building things because you stick to the core of what you wan to build and are not easily sidetracked. You can also see above that I've crossed out certain aspects that I have already completed.

Unfortunately I fell ill. So progress will have to be slowed significantly. Nevertheless, I am still on track for an alpha release this Wednesday.

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Copy and paste every week's goals into the top of each daily blog post

Easy and done

Whiteboard discipline

Plot out the first few hours of my day on the whiteboard every night

I must write down the actual TIME I would go and do my run

Do NOT sleep past 10pm

Failed

Think about how to use sites like niice or http://designspiration.net/ to create a Spotify or TV-like service

I want to be able to glance at these pretty things when I'm bored, kinda like having a TV in the background

I want to do this to develop taste, because I don't really use Instagram as much as a lot of other people do

Observe b4yougo.net and continue releasing it and following already released channels

Build a login/accounts system into the boilerplate

I have since turned this into the weeklie project itself

So today I am planning to work more on the site. The goal today is to finish the following two features:

Setting weekly goals

Creating daily entries

Not necessarily all of the connected functionality must be there, but by the end of the day we should have a form for the user to fill out and the data must be saved to the database.

So it seems that I was able to do all that. This is good, but there are so many other little things I have to deal with. On the face of it, it may seem like a simple app, but it is not simple at all. Nevertheless, I feel like I made good progress today. I will continue to work on this, since I have only 3 days until the Beta launch.

What's great is that I already have 2 of my friends agreeing to be beta-testers. For tomorrow, I really need to finish the weekly goals feature. And that means:

Copy and paste every week's goals into the top of each daily blog post

Whiteboard discipline

Plot out the first few hours of my day on the whiteboard every night

I must write down the actual TIME I would go and do my run

Do NOT sleep past 10pm

Think about how to use sites like niice or http://designspiration.net/ to create a Spotify or TV-like service

I want to be able to glance at these pretty things when I'm bored, kinda like having a TV in the background

I want to do this to develop taste, because I don't really use Instagram as much as a lot of other people do

Observe b4yougo.net and continue releasing it and following already released channels

Build a login/accounts system into the boilerplate

This is the goal for today:

Get accounts working

Done.

Well after a lot of prying, I finally got the accounts system to work. I'm pretty happy that it's now behind me, but I still need to work on getting the e-mail verification to work I believe. Should I bother with it? hmmm.

The e-mail verification was too much for me today. However, I have decided to just press on with the more important aspects of the webapp. I am sleeping very late today because of some socializing. This is allowable, but I should make sure that it doesn't happen too often.

Friday, January 30, 2015

Copy and paste every week's goals into the top of each daily blog post

Whiteboard discipline

Plot out the first few hours of my day on the whiteboard every night

I must write down the actual TIME I would go and do my run

Do NOT sleep past 10pm

Think about how to use sites like niice or http://designspiration.net/ to create a Spotify or TV-like service

I want to be able to glance at these pretty things when I'm bored, kinda like having a TV in the background

I want to do this to develop taste, because I don't really use Instagram as much as a lot of other people do

Observe b4yougo.net and continue releasing it and following already released channels

Build a login/accounts system into the boilerplate

This is the goal for today:

Get accounts working

If there is time left, brainstorm about the journalling app and/or the design TV

Let's see how far we can get.

So it seems I was able to finally write down a process flow for how the accounts system will work. Now I just need to get to it. I spent a little too long watching a movie this morning when I probably didn't need to. I just really needed to pull out my notebook and start drawing.

Perhaps what I really need to do is to put my notebook somewhere easy to access. Because today, I would've had to reach into my backpack and fetch the notebook before I could draw out the user accounts flow. That probably contributed to the reason why I did not get much work done.

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Copy and paste every week's goals into the top of each daily blog post

Whiteboard discipline

Plot out the first few hours of my day on the whiteboard every night

I must write down the actual TIME I would go and do my run

Do NOT sleep past 10pm

Think about how to use sites like niice or http://designspiration.net/ to create a Spotify or TV-like service

I want to be able to glance at these pretty things when I'm bored, kinda like having a TV in the background

I want to do this to develop taste, because I don't really use Instagram as much as a lot of other people do

Observe b4yougo.net and continue releasing it and following already released channels

Build a login/accounts system into the boilerplate

I have even more hopes for the next 28 days. One idea that I might work on is to create something that can take the place of this particular blog. The things I would like to do to win today is:

Brainstorm next site ideas

Journaling

Design TV

Take a look at the accounts system

Sleep before 10pm

Let's see what we can do today :)

Well I certainly did make a breakthrough today. I finally figured out how to use the accounts templates. This will save me a LOT of time when compared to writing everything myself. I have a basic idea of how it works, so tomorrow I can really dive into make it part of my boilerplate project.

It's rather simple actually. First, you should clone the project over so you can make changes to it as a custom package. And then when you try to include the form, you have to tell it what state it should be in. Like {{> atForm state='signUp'}}. That's what I was missing this whole time. In any case, I look forward to finishing the accounts system tomorrow as well as perhaps writing a tutorial on how to use it.

I have some ideas for the journaling app, but almost nothing for the design TV. I'm going to have to think about it some more. At any rate, tomorrow I only have one goal:

Get accounts working

If there is time left, brainstorm about the journalling app and/or the design TV

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Every 28 days, I should be launching SOMETHING. And this first time, it's b4yougo.net. The last 7 days has felt like it was forever. I can't believe it was only a week. Every single day was packed with things to do, things to learn, people to see. It feels good to know you are productive and making progress though, although it is a little tiring.

I've released my site onto Hacker News, and I am anticipating strong negative feedback. Mostly in the lack of depth of my site and the unviability of my business idea. It may look like a veiled attempt at collecting e-mails, but it really isn't. It's my first app in Meteor and I want it to be good. In any case, I need to remember I should FAIL FORWARD.

Any criticism I get, I will take and see it as an instruction for how to proceed with the next project.

Anyway, let's get to this week's evaluation.

Last Week's Goals

Take a look at some of the design-based Instagram accounts

I don't look at these as much as I would like to though

Plot out my morning routine, at least the first couple hours of it

Massive fail

I need to write this on my whiteboard

Publish two posts on my personal blog

I almost didn't make it, I need to copy and paste each week's goals into the beginning of every day's blog post to keep myself reminded of my weekly goals

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Build the login system FROM SCRATCH, and then prep for launch. That's pretty much all I have to do today. Let's see if I can do it. No. I WILL do it.

...

Well, I've focused more today on the launch than anything else. I added a link on each page that leads the users to an email collection page. We're going to sell the ability to receive in your mailbox, the SIM card and farecard you'll use. This way, you can really "HIT THE GROUND RUNNING"

I also added Analytics, but it doesn't fully work yet. Oh, we also have our own domain now too. How exciting!

Monday, January 26, 2015

Today, I worked more on getting my boilerplate down. I spent a lot of time providing access to alter the styling of the header bar. This was perhaps not the best use of my time, and I probably could've left it until I actually needed to change the styling of the header bars in my projects. Nevertheless, my header bars are now highly customizable.

I also started learning a CSS preprocessor known as Stylus. It makes CSS a LOT more readable, and overall it just feels way more efficient and less bloated.

I spent way too much time not being productive. I keep looking at these pre-built login and accounts packages but none of them work quite well. The only one that works well doesn't jive well with my DOM structure and it just messes everything up. I need to just roll up my sleeves and do it myself. I wasted so much time looking for pre-built solutions that I forgot that life is just a series of decisions between the right way and the easy way.

Cheers to tomorrow, I hope I can get an accounts system working by then. And then it's final prep for launch of b4yougo.

Sunday, January 25, 2015

So I wake up this morning, by reiterating the goals I stated last night, which are:

Learn about the accounts system on Meteor

Listen to some podcasts and write at least one blog post on adrianmcli.com

I'm going to do the podcasts thing first because I'm pretty drained from programming a lot yesterday. This will be good, today will be a good break. I slept in today because I think I've burnt out yesterday. One thing I really need to make sure to do is to sleep on time. That takes discipline, and I need to devote some time to think about it. So maybe I'll add that to the list as well. So now the list looks like this:

Learn about the accounts system on Meteor

Listen to some podcasts and write at least one blog post on adrianmcli.com

Think about how to implement discipline in sleeping earlier

I'm come back later tonight and finish off this post.

So I did end up doing some blog writing, but eventually deleted it because it got really irrelevant. I was going to write a blog post about setting up a meteor project. But throughout the course of that, I discovered that it made a lot more sense (and a lot more fun) to just write a bash script. So I ended up learning a lot about how to write bash scripts. I also started a project (now on github) which I plan to develop into my meteor boilerplate project.

I say today I've achieved 75% productivity. Being at the Blenz coffee shop was definitely not so productive though. I need to be more okay with staying home. Tomorrow, I want to have completed the accounts system. Nothing else is required. That should be my one goal to win the day.

Saturday, January 24, 2015

It's not just "seize the day", it should be "seize each day". It's easy to forget that we must make it a habit, and not just read the quote and feel warm and fuzzy inside.

I'm going to try to seize the day by using these blog posts to establish my "things I have to accomplish today for it to be a successful day."

Today, I must:

Complete the travel site to the point where all I have to do is wire in the backend

Complete info page for Toronto

Flesh out my one page productivity plan

At this point, I will leave this post and go about my day. The following paragraph will be written by me at the end of the day. I'm going to keep this pattern up every single day.

Well, I more or less did what I planned to do. I encountered a bug with the site, but for an MVP it's really a non-issue. Instead of launching with 10 cities, I'm going to launch with 3. And that's alright, because an MVP should be minimal. The pages that I DO have set up are beautiful, and that communicates my vision. That's what counts.

Regarding the final point, I have been so engrossed with programming that I didn't really get around to developing my productivity plan. I did read over it, but didn't really critically or creatively think about what I could add to my habits. In any case, tomorrow is going to be a new day, and another day of creation.

I plan to:

Learn about the accounts system on Meteor

Listen to some podcasts and write at least one blog post on adrianmcli.com

Friday, January 23, 2015

Today I met with someone I met over two years ago. It was an interesting experience. I found out that we were both very enthused with the entrepreneurial space. I think we will get along just fine.

Today I met with yet another person I haven't seen in a long time. Unfortunately, although he liked to build stuff and have dreams of entrepreneurship, it was obvious that there was a difference in energy levels between him and the other person.

I caught myself considering to read more technical books today, it's good that I stopped myself and closed that tab. It's important to go back to the one thing I need to finish. I have 5 days before launch, so that means I need to concentrate on getting everything ready for launch.

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Today I spent a lot of time working on the site and also summarizing Peter Voogd's ideas. The UI looks more impressive every day. I also finally settled on three metrics and have made a mockup of a page. Tomorrow I should hammer out and refine what should or should not go on the page. I need to be more certain of how the information will be displayed so that I can finally start wiring up the backend for it.

If I have time, I'll also have to think about if it would be a good idea to have accounts. It would take me some time to figure out how to set it up, but I think it would be good to learn it anyway. I'll eventually have to get good at that.

I should also think about how I'm going to fetch a lot of the data, or maybe I'll just have to manually do it or recruit some friends. Levels.io got Nomadlist started by tweeting a Google Doc. But at that time, he already had a lot of followers, so I don't think I can replicate that same kind of success.

Worse comes to worst, I'll simply launch with 6-8 cities and see what people think on Hacker News and Reddit. Remember, you only start learning when you launch.

Hmm, maybe that means I should put in an e-mail or a comment box so people can comment and give feedback on their suggestions.

Also, I'm going to start doing daily point form summaries so I can easily refer back to this post and know what I was talking about.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Wow, it's been yet another week. It feels like it's been a long time! This past week was great because I'm finally settled into Vancouver and I no longer have a lot of social obligations. I don't have to travel and I can keep a nice schedule. I've been able to wake up early (before 6am) consistently and for the past few days, at 4:30am.

I've also pared down on a lot of things. I am no longer consuming as much and I'm producing much more now. I need to keep on doing this, because I realized that I am not trying to get a job. If I was trying to get a job, then maybe I would need to know the technology better. But I'm just trying to get shit done. Levels.io himself doesn't even use databases, he simply stores things in plain text files.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

A lot of progress so far. I have learned a lot about Meteor, Foundation, and just making sites in general. I used to say I knew how to make sites because I made some a long time ago, but it really isn't until you get into the habit of doing it do you really get good at it. There's just so much that you need to know off the top of your head. I'm glad I am getting quite comfortable with Meteor's templating system. However, I haven't really done anything interesting in terms of logic, so I don't actually know much about how to make Meteor's logic work well.

Nevertheless, I was inspired by how this guy built his sites in PHP without any database at all, he stores all his data in plain text files as JSON. I'm now pretty confident that trying to normalize a huge complex schema isn't the right way to prototype fast. MongoDB's document model is great for this, and Meteor interacts very well.

There were many times over the past 48 hours or so that had me wanting to quit the travel site project. However, I know that even if absolutely nobody uses it, it's important I get into the habit of FINISHING things. So I am 100% committed to finishing b4YouGo. It's not the achievement or the goal that's important, it's what you become and how the process develops your character that counts.

The person you become in the process is way more important than the goal. Tomorrow is evaluation day, and I have a feeling I might be setting a deadline for completing b4YouGo by Day 28. How exciting!

Monday, January 19, 2015

Two days left until evaluation day again. Today I actually had a really good day. I've gotten through enough of the Discover Meteor book that I can begin building my own things. So I did! I started building my prototype for the travel info app. I felt like I learned a LOT of Meteor today, and it's been pretty good so far.

One thing that I think I could've done better was to not obsess over so many details.

It's important to get a good idea of what you want before you start. Because if you try to figure it out along the way, you're going to get slowed down with non-stop decisions and end up not being very productive. You want to get the design phase out of the way and have a design "freeze" so that you can concentrate on making it REAL. Otherwise, you'll never make it out of orbit, let alone the moon.

As a result, I'm going to take a page from levels.io and make sure I have a pretty clear idea of what I want my site to look like before going forward with all the backend wiring. This will require me brushing up on scary CSS, but it's about time I faced my fears and got good at that.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Long day today. I ran 2.5 km to the McDonald's in the pouring rain hoping to get breakfast only to find out that it is not open. It was only open 24 hours for the drive thru. As a result, I just ran all the way back.

I did some Meteor tutorials today, and it did actually feel quite good. I am considering investing in a graphics tablet for my computer so I can draw stuff with my hand, however I am not sure if it is a good idea at this point. Perhaps I need to keep my focus on Meteor for now.

There's also the issue of developing good design taste. A friend of mine informed me that I should follow people on Instagram with good design. Looking at things with good design will help develop taste, so I should do this. However, I don't know if I'll actually look at Instagram that often though.

“IF YOU WATCHED a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn’t cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn’t tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you’d seen. The truth is, you wouldn’t remember that movie a week later, except you’d feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.

But we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to feel meaningful. The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won’t make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either. Here’s what I mean by that:”

Excerpt From: Donald Miller. “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.” iBooks.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

I woke up early today, and ran. It was actually quite nice and I think I will keep it up. I've pushed the alarm to 4:50am now so hopefully I will be able to make 4:30 by the end of this week. The biggest issue I have is getting a place to have breakfast since the McDonald's does not open until 5am on weekdays and 6am on the weekends. I went to Denny's this morning, but the price of the food is several multiples of what I am comfortable with. I should consider cooking.

I had been putting off Meteor tutorials for the longest time, but today I finally sat down and got to it. To my surprise, it was actually a lot more enjoyable and went a lot faster than I could've imagined. As a result, I think I need to keep this in mind for the next time I try putting off something. I think I largely tried to put it off because I knew it would be a long road, but if I always hesitate at the beginning of long roads, then how will I accomplish anything worthwhile?

I've begun cold showers again now that my cold has almost left me completely. It is difficult, yes. But it is nevertheless very invigorating and a good mental test right at the beginning of the day.

Friday, January 16, 2015

I'm adjusting back to the Pacific Time Zone and today I woke up without an alarm at around 5:30am. This is great, but I have to make sure I sleep around 10pm or so if I want to keep this up. This is doable, but I just wanted to write this down so I keep it in mind.

Doing the bed after you get up is actually quite nice, it prevents you from going back to sleep or just lying there and doing unproductive things.

I've been thinking about the Canva tutorials, and I can't really say I'm absorbing much from them. Perhaps it's best that I focus on getting Meteor tutorials out of the way first. In fact, yes. I'm going to make it my ONE FOCUS. I will say that the blog posts on Canva are really great though.

I tried getting around to reading one of the many blog emails I get from various blogs I subscribe ti and I found this quote:

A problem is created when we look at the benefit we want without considering the surest way to get it.

It's always exciting to be working towards something great, but just like the tennis example I mentioned before, it's important not to be so excited about the benefit that we forget to experiment and try to find the best way to do things. I started off trying to do a lot of very different things all at once and I ended up failing on that. The only time I ever get anything done is by focusing on one thing and one thing only. That's the case with studying in school and also with finishing certain topics or books. I'm pretty sure I would have never finished To Mock a Mockingbird if I was trying to do random tutorials on the side.

More and more, I am starting to realize I need to put 100% focus on Meteor.

Today I wrote a blog post summarizing a video on what Unique Value means.

I need to plot my day better. I woke up and I just felt that there were so many things I needed to do but I did not know what exactly.

I felt really tired this afternoon, and no doubt it had something to do with either the large meal I had or the jet lag. Nevertheless, being tired and not being able to focus on reading something is a very important issue I need to deal with. The only thing I can think of is perhaps listening to podcasts or talks. I wonder if there are any productive activities I can do during my tired mode. I should make a post on the Fastlane forums about this.

Done.

I finally finished my summary of the 7 Day Startup here. It took two hours. What's interesting is that I was originally thinking of doing some Meteor tutorials, but ended up procrastinating by writing that blog post. Interestingly though, I would've felt too tired to start a new blog post, but the fact that it was half-written made it a lot easier to get started into the task.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Well it's that time again, the time to evaluate my previous week. I know this won't be a very good one because I had been bogged down with a lot of last minute goodbyes as I leave Hong Kong after an extended stay. Being that I'm also travelling today, this post was probably mostly written in the lounge at the airport or on the plane itself.

With respect to taking notes from Canva tutorials, I no longer think that is effective. Developing taste requires a more organic approach and it isn't just a checklist that you keep in your back pocket. I'll still try to complete the tutorials and read their posts on design, but I think looking at top templates from Theme Forest actually help quite a bit.

As with the previous weekly evaluation, let's find out what worked and what didn't work. Point form summary follows below.

Good

Built adrianmcli.com on the Jekyll blogging platform

Cut out taking notes on Canva tutorials and over focusing on reading Javascript: The Definitive Guide

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Yet another day of final social obligations and then packing up to leave. Always remember to pack light and refrain from buying bulky material goods. It'll always come back to bite you when you have to pack to leave. Thankfully, I've managed to pack everything I needed into my baggage and I will be back in Canada tomorrow!

Two themes possible for my travel site idea:http://themeforest.net/item/responsive-knowledge-base-faq-html-template/4640819
http://themeforest.net/item/knowledge-base-html-template/4276747

Also, I think some of the landing pages out there can be used as well.

I've bought a book, called the 7 Day Startup. It talks about the story of a guy who tried to build his own startup over a year and it didn't work out. Then he did something a little different and it took off in just 7 days. I can't wait to read this on the plane!

Monday, January 12, 2015

Two days left until evaluation day 2. A hell of a hectic day today, running on only one hour of sleep. It was possible, though, and I succeeded in attending all of my social obligations. Obviously, it's not ideal, but it's important to know that it's possible. Unfortunately, I did not do much at all today in terms of my goals so this will be the end of today's blog post.

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Here's a video of how to get started into web development. Below is a summary of important points to keep in mind (for myself personally):

Are you on the same playing field?

SASS/LESS/Stylus

Build management systems

Bower/Grunt/Yeoman

GitHub

What text editor do you use?

Jquery

good with selectors; DOM traversal

user events

AJAX and CRUD

plugins

Job history

I also found a really great post from Reddit that led to a great book recommendation:

The book that the guy read was called The 7 Day Startup. And it seems to have good reviews on its ability to get you to simply start and stop waiting and reading this and that. I'll considering buying it since it's priced at only $5. I keep thinking "maybe once I read this book, I'll actually do ..." and it's just not right (look at yesterday's post on a similar topic. However, this got someone with less skills than me to start something in 7 days. So why can't I start something even better in 7 or less days?

There's also this podcast interview of the author. I'm going to listen to it and hopefully get back tomorrow for a better review of his background and his product.

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Staying up late is a bad idea. I stayed up really late and was very unproductive as a result. In any case, I've been trying to get the blog together at adrianmcli.com. I think it's acceptable, and even a pretty good idea to start with a pre-made template of what you want your site to look like. However, I think it's also important to customize it in such a way that you create a rather unique identity.

I found the site niice.co, which is an image search engine. It's very cool, because its stated purpose is to allow you to create "moodboards" and build inspiration from images that already exist out there. I'll have to think about how I can use this to turn it into something I can do daily to build up my design "taste".

Still little-to-no progress on the Javascript front, however. Perhaps it's for the best, since I am kind of focused on trying to get the blog done so far. Will recap more when time goes on. I'm also finding a lot of social obligations to be clogging up my remaining time here in Hong Kong. In a few days, I'll be making my way back to Canada, specifically Vancouver. I can always hope that things will be better when I'm there, but I know that change needs to happen, and it needs to happen now (or yesterday). It's always an excuse when I find myself saying "oh, it'll be okay when I finally ... ". Because it's usually an indication that something is wrong within myself right now, pushing the blame to external circumstances always serve to undermine your own determination for self-improvement.

Friday, January 9, 2015

So I discovered that I don't really need foundation, at least not yet. Originally, I wanted to use Foundation to build my custom personal website and blog. However, while I was searching for good hosting, I discovered something I had long forgotten: that GitHub provides free hosting! And on top of that, it turns out that they also freely host a minimalist developer's blogging platform named Jekyll. I prodded further, and found this great tutorial, by Joshua Lande. I clicked around some more and found the Hyde theme to be just what I wanted! Within a couple hours, I had my own blog up at adrianmcli.com. A lot of work is still left to do, but at least now I have something on the domain!

The (temporary) deprecation of Foundation is good, because it means I can focus more on learning Meteor itself. I will eventually be moving at least some of these blog posts over to adrianmcli.com as well, but until then I'll keep plodding along here for now.

Thursday, January 8, 2015

So I've been trying to play with Foundation. And honestly, it was quite intimidating at first because I haven't done websites in a while, and I was very temped to just use the templates. However, I think I will try to approach this by trying to do it from scratch. I've got a rough idea on how I want my personal site to look like: I'd like a persistent sidebar on the left, with a main page that scrolls on the right (taking up about 70% of the screen width).

Some things I learned about images and text from Canva tutorials this morning:

Use transparency to make text pop

Add transparent shapes to make text pop

Layer two photos of different transparencies

Low-transparency icons can subtly fill empty space

Crop high-resolution photos for textures (that can be used as backgrounds)

Remove saturation to get black and white photos, then overlay a coloured transparency

White icons work well with blurred background images

Neon text works well with darkened and desaturated backgrounds

Regarding goal-setting and whatnot, I'm finding it hard to have a consistent pace on the Javascript: The Definitive Guide book along with the Discover Meteor book. I find that I have completely stopped on Meteor and focused completely on Javascript. I suppose that's not necessarily a bad thing, but I need to make sure I'm not spending too much time on Javascript: The Definitive Guide. The Meteor book is going to be more important for getting stuff off the ground.

I considered assigning myself a reading of a-chapter-a-day for the Definitive Guide so that I could finish it in 14 days, but upon further reflection (of the chapter contents), I think it makes more sense to advance my focus onto the Meteor framework and refer to the Definitive Guide for reference instead. One of the primary reasons for this is Gary Fung's statement that he "printed money with php soup". At this point (so late in the game), it is more important that I get started at making SOMETHING than trying to be real good at making it. That can always come later, but the habit of creating is so important.

What I'll do from here on out:

Do Canva tutorials daily

Build something on Foundation for adrianmcli.com

Go through the Discover Meteor book

Maybe it's a good idea not to do more than three things per day. So hopefully this will provide more progress in the near future.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

This is an intimidating post to write because it sets the tone for all subsequent evaluation days. Nevertheless, I'm going to go through the posts of the last 7 days (Day 1 to 6) and pick out the important things and think about how my next week should look like.

This week began when I was at my sickest from my cold, and unfortunately I used that as an excuse not to do much. However, it wasn't a total loss.

The idea is to make sure I'm doing SOMETHING. Even if it's nearly a blank page, the fact that I made SOMETHING would be really important. The difficult part of this, is that I foresee I might be intimidated by the fact that there are two things to do. Perhaps I should only choose one of the two. I will still aim to do both this week, but perhaps the priority should be on the use of Foundation for putting something on adrianmcli.com. We shall see how the next week goes.

Monday, January 5, 2015

Lately I've been down with a cold, and only recently have I gotten a bit better. So today, I decided to venture off on a short hike. Just to give some context, about a week ago I decided to see how far I could hike and challenged myself to a 50km hike. It was intense, took more than 12 hours, and it made me walk with a limp for about a week afterwards but it was worth it. Mostly because of the following quote:

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."- T.S. Eliot

This is the most inspiring quote I have found to date, and I really hope it'll lead me to do more this year. It's not even about the hike, it was more about the kind of person you become while going through such a tough (at least for me, it was very tough) challenge. In any case, while I was hiking today, I was thinking about all the people who say hard work is not enough. And I think I want to reframe that perspective with an analogy that I came up with.

If you are trying to learn how to play tennis, and you find that you keep hitting the ball out of the court, the way to improve is not in trying to hit harder. What you need to do is to try harder to hit more accurately. And the only way to do that is by adjusting your angle of contact, your stance, the position of your arm, your stroke, etc. These are all variables that require adjustment and experimentation.

The point I'm getting at, is that trying harder at doing something that hasn't really been working out for you isn't going to work. What is really important is to try harder in being able to look at a problem from different perspectives. And that requires stepping out of your comfort zone.

In the tennis analogy, maybe you've had the same stance with your feet since forever and you've been able to hit the ball. And you fear that if you changed your stance, you might not even make contact with the ball, let alone hit it out of the court. However, we must be willing to take these risks if we want to find out how to truly improve in a meaningful way.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Today I dropped a pack of kitkat while boarding a bus, these were all I had left.

I should really establish a daily routine. I want to get better at design, so that the things I make in the near future won't look ugly. So one of the things I need to do is go on the Canva Design School site at least once a day.

Speaking of routines, I want every 7th day to be a re-evaluation of the last 7 days. It's important to continuously be evaluating and improving in this way.

I should also get used to using web front-end design frameworks like Foundation, for example. Perhaps I should be making a page each day for two weeks, or one per week for the entire year? I dunno, still thinking about it.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

So as you can see, I have not been able to think of something better than using my hiking pictures to put at the top of my blog post. Yesterday's post was also published late because I fell asleep before I could click publish. Maybe this is a good idea after all, to do things in arrears.

Hmmm, I wonder what other things in life might be good to do in arrears? Facebook has a built-in ability to schedule your posts, and there are a bunch of sites for scheduling Twitter posts as well. The first "annoyance" I can think of is thinking about when to post things, so I just stopped caring about the timing of posts. Oh well, an interesting musing nonetheless.

I haven't done much today because I'm still quite sick with my cold. It's amazing how difficult it is to be productive when you are sick. I wonder if there's an idea in there somewhere?

On another note, I have submitted this post in arrears again because I fell asleep before I could remember to hit publish.

Friday, January 2, 2015

So today, I bought my domain name at adrianmcli.com. There's nothing there right now, but I bought it for 10 years thinking that it will be my personal brand and if I needed to get a job I'll direct people there. Now I have to think about what to put up: a static page, something dynamic?, a hub of my favourite go-to links? I'm not quite sure yet.

Making this post, I wanted to put some kind of picture on but I didn't have any special photo or picture at-the-ready. So an idea I have is a blogging platform that allows you to use HTML5 to draw directly into your blog post. That'd save me the time to have to open up the paint software on my desktop, draw, save, and then upload it.